Degradation: Shape Changed

1OBSCURATION:

ODDITY MANIFEST, YET SHAPE UNCHANGED

This current-century desire to innovate in formative terms has one manifestation which is a bit paradoxical: the form itself is not changed; only the appearance of the surface. This could be considered, depending on the circumstances, either the most timid or the most elegant of the newly odd in architecture. And, also a bit paradoxically, approaches along these lines have gravitated to two opposite extremes: one that adds surficial treatments to make a form appear more substantial, the other to make it appear less so.

1a. Variegating: Elaboration at the Surface

In this era of the peculiar, it’s often a big budget that permits the excesses that concern us. But far more often, indeed as regards the vast majority of buildings in the 21st, budgets are normal: that is, very modest. In spite of this fact, the urge to express—to signify “creativity”—remains apparent, even when the budget is low and there may actually be nothing particularly appropriate about an elaborated design. Of course, the default building volume among that vast majority is commonly little more than a rectangular solid, and attempts at design enhancement often comprise elaboration that is limited primarily to surface effects thereon.

Precedents Such a desire to elaborate architectonic surfaces has deep roots in the past. It can sometimes seem almost a “fractal” phenomenon, with each element elaborated and those elements featuring in turn their own elaboration, etc. The sequence from early Romanesque leading to high Gothic represents a steady increase in the elaboration and development of surfaces and volumes. Baroque and rococo designs continued the phenomenon in their own vocabularies. The compulsion to elaborate did ORO Editions not always lead to convincing results: witness the awkward appliques of Rome’s Porta Pia or